Letters on Himself
and the Ashram

Life in England (1879-1893)

An Early Memory

I am not at all concerned about Nicodemus and what seems to me his stupid and ignorant question; he brings a fantastic physical notion across Christ's teaching and I am afraid I must hold him partially responsible for Freud's sexual meanderings and his craze for going back into his mother's womb. I don't myself remember any blissful sojourn in that locality in my case and I don't believe in it and I am quite sure I never felt any passion for returning there. The great Sigismund must have had it, I suppose, and remembered that blissful period and felt a longing for beatific return and I suppose others must have had it unless its acceptance is only a result of a general acceptance of the papal infallibility of Sigismund in psychoanalytical matters, about which few people have any direct reliable knowledge or can form a truly independent conviction based on truly independent evidence. I believe the practical methods and evidence for the success of psychoanalysis are made up mostly of suggestion and auto-suggestion; for suggestion and auto-suggestion can do almost anything and can make you believe in anything and everything. Many of these suggestions seem to me quite artificial and their forced connection with sex to be quite groundless. For instance, there is the suggestion of the dream of being stabbed with a knife, which they say is a rendering by the subliminal of an actual sex-probe, and of that you can obviously persuade a patient who is under your influence. I myself had when a boy of 8 or 9 a vivid dream which I never forgot of myself alone in my bed—I used to be sent to bed much earlier than my brothers—and lay there in a sort of constant terror of the darkness and phantoms and burglars till my brothers came up [incomplete]

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Exposure to Christianity

[Lines from a poem submitted to Sri Aurobindo:]

Soul of poet, thine be quiet
Of the Virgin's prayerful countenance ...

[Underlining "prayerful countenance":] Lord God! you bring me back to my childhood's agonies in an English Nonconformist chapel.

11 September 1933

Education in England

This afternoon I was doing japa as usual and dropped off to sleep. Then I saw a curious dream.... I sang and the song was on Shiva, and was so ecstatic that you got up and blessed me, joining in the hymn.... Tell me, however, do you ever sing—I don't mean music of the spheres but our mortal songs with musical intervals as we understand, as for instance Mother does?

No—I don't sing on the physical plane. My education in England was badly neglected—though people say to the contrary. I filled in most of the lacunae afterwards, but some remained of which the musical gap is one. But that is no reason why I should not sing on the supraphysical plane where you met me. There is no exact correspondence between the formation here and the formations there. On the contrary on these inner planes the subliminal as they call it in Europe—that is to say, our inner selves is full of powers which have not emerged—yet at least—in the physical consciousness. And especially as I was full of Shiva in your experience there is no reason why I should not have sung for I suppose Shiva sings as well as dances?

31 August 1933

I.C.S. Examination

Do you think your I.C.S. examination answer papers of 1892 have been preserved by the authorities? I was thinking of

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getting them if possible, in order to preserve them as a relic with us. Perhaps they do not give them out or they might have disposed of them.

Not likely that they keep such things.

1 May 1936

A Cambridge Anecdote

While we all agree that we all lie, X thinks she is incapable of lying.

Lies? Well, a Punjabi student at Cambridge once took our breath away by the frankness and comprehensive profundity of his affirmation: "Liars! But we are all liars!" It appeared that he had intended to say "lawyers", but his pronunciation gave his remark a deep force of philosophic observation and generalisation which he had not intended! But it seems to me the last word on human nature. Only the lying is sometimes intentional, some times vaguely half-intentional, sometimes quite unintentional, momentary and unconscious. So there you are!

Learning Languages

It seems most people read more than they assimilate. They read lots of French stories, novels and dramas very rapidly and as a result they hardly assimilate the idioms, phrases, grammatical peculiarities, etc. I find it surprising that X and Y commit elementary errors when they speak. I think one ought to read a book three to four times.

I suppose most learn only to be able to read French books, not to know the language well. X writes and reads fluently but he does not know the grammar—he has only just begun to learn it. Y does not know French so well—he has learned mostly by typing a lot of things in French. It is not many who know French accurately and idiomatically. Z was the best in that respect. I don't think many people would consent to make a principle of reading each book 3 or 4 times in the way you advocate, for very few have the scholarly mind—but two or three books should

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be so read—I learnt Sanskrit by reading the Naladamayanti episode in the Mahabharat like that with minute care several times.

25 March 1937

First Reading of the Upanishads

Is it true that the deep significance of mantras like "OM Shanti Shanti Shanti" and of words like "paix" in the Mother's Prayers is lost because of too much familiarity?

Yes, it must be the familiarity—for I remember when I first read the OM Shanti Shanti Shanti of the Upanishads it had a powerful effect on me. In French it depends on the form or the way in which it is put.

14 February 1936

The European Temperament

How is it that most Europeans manage to remain cheerful, while in India there is so much gloom and moroseness in family life, and cunning, strategy and selfishness in social life? Half of the cheerfulness in Europeans, I suspect, comes not so much from intrinsic joy or humour as from the discipline of having good manners.

It is largely the latter—to show one's bad moods in society is considered bad form and indicating want of self-control; so people in Europe usually keep their worse side for their own house and family and don't show it outside. Some do but are considered as either neurasthenic or as having a "sale caractère". But apart from that Europeans have, I think, more vitality than Indians and are more elastic and resilient and less nervously sensitive. There are plenty of exceptions, of course, but generally, I think, that is true. In family life it is more of the rajasic ego than gloom and moroseness that creates trouble. Gloom and moroseness generally meet with ridicule as a "Byronic" or tragic affectation, so it is very soon discouraged. Cunning, strategy and selfishness in social life is considered in France at least to be more a characteristic of peasant life—in the middle class it is supposed to be the sign of the "arriviste".

6 January 1937

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